I was out in the front garden sweeping leaves one afternoon when a red-headed kid rolled up on his bike and started talking to me.
“Hey, I’m Max. What are you doing?” He said grinning.
I couldn’t help but notice and stare at the gap in his smile. He had a front tooth missing and it made him look like a bit of a hillbilly.
“I’m Danny. And what does it look like I’m doing? I’m sweeping leaves!”
I was a little frustrated cause I wanted to be inside watching TV but my mum insisted I complete my chores first.
Doesn’t she understand that doing my chores first means I miss my shows which, in turn, renders the reward of getting to watch the TV, useless?
Anyway, this kid Max strikes up a conversation about bikes and his favourite shows etc. Turns out, he’s actually pretty cool.
“You wanna come to hang out at mine? I’ve got a whole den setup where we can watch movies and play games”.
He spoke with such an infectious energy, I couldn’t resist.
“Where do you live?” I asked
“Literally like two roads away, the house with the green roof”. He replied without hesitation.
“Green roof?” All the houses in the area either had a red, or blue roof. I don’t remember ever seeing a house with a green roof but, I guess I don’t pay much attention to roof colours.
“Alright, lemme finish up here and I’ll go get my bike”.
I finished sweeping the leaves into a neat pile and then bagged them up. Then I took the broom into the kitchen where my mum was sitting talking to my aunt.
“Alright, I’m done. I’m gonna go over to Max’s and hang out for a bit, I’ll see you later”.
“Okay Hun, well done, have fun”. I could tell she wasn’t listening.
When she and my aunt start getting into one of their deep conversations they’re oblivious to the world.
I put the broom away and went and got my bike from the garage and met Max out in the front of the house.
We rode around the neighbourhood a little bit, racing, and talking about school and girls and our lives in general.
I don’t know what it was about him, but I felt like I’d known Max for years.
Eventually, we decided to head to his house.
He wasn’t lying, his house did have a green roof.
We went in and it was beautiful.
They were clearly a well-off family. Everything was clean and modern. Not like our house where everything was old and every room was full of dad’s clutter.
Not to mention the constant noise of my sisters fighting and my family always coming over for a chat.
Max’s house was quiet and peaceful.
“Where are your parents?” I asked.
“Oh, they’re out of town” he replied.
He seemed a little sad. But I guess being a kid at home alone can be a little lonely. No wonder he stopped and struck up a conversation.
I felt even more glad I’d come over to hang out now.
“My den is set up down in the basement, let’s go!” He said as he took off through the kitchen, opened the basement door and ran down the stairs leaving me to catch up.
Again, he wasn’t lying! The basement was full of games, a pool table, a sofa, a TV, fridge, it was a proper little man cave!
“You any good at FIFA?” He asked chucking me a control pad.
“Am I good at FIFA!?” I snapped back. “You’ll have to find out won’t you!?”
We both rushed to the sofa ready to get into some proper gaming.
After an hour or two passed and I’d whooped his butt at FIFA about 10 times we got bored of playing games and decided to explore the basement a bit.
At the far end was a bunch of boxes, a washing machine, a furnace, books and other junk that they had stored down there.
We were going through some of the old boxes trying on clothes and messing about when Max found an old VCR.
It was covered in dust and had a few tapes with it.
Max said that some of the tapes might be worth something to collectors or something like that, so we should hook it all up and try them out to see.
The first couple of tapes were recordings of old TV shows from back in the day. Then Max found a tape with what seemed like nothing on it except static.
It showed nothing until we forwarded it right to the end of the tape, where all this weird stuff started happening.
We saw Max sitting on the sofa, then lying on the ceiling, then sitting on the sofa again but, on fire this time, and then he vanished completely and the video went back to static.
I looked at max, “What the hell was that”?
He shrugged, “I don’t know man but let’s try it again!”
I wasn’t too keen on it, to be honest, but, Max is one of those people whose enthusiasm infects you and you can’t refuse.
“Alright, let’s watch it again,” I said shaking off my slight apprehension about it.
We rewound the tape and played it again and things got even stranger.
We saw ourselves this time, from above and with sound but it was low pitched like it was slowed down.
“Hey, that’s us just a minute ago finding the tapes!” I shouted while pointing at the screen and elbowing Max in his ribs.
“Yup, looks like us alright,” said max calmly.
“How is this happening man? Like what the hell is this?”
All of a sudden, the camera angle changed to being in front of us as if a camera was inside the TV. But it seemed far away and blurry and was slowly zooming in and becoming clearer.
I looked at max and Max looked at me.
“Bro… What the?” I was dumbfounded.
Max got up off the sofa and went closer to the screen, and at the same time, the max on the screen got up off the sofa and moved closer to us.
“Looks like we’re live now!” Max shouted as he jumped back onto the sofa next to me.
“Bro this is insane” The fear had gone and I was smiling. This was kinda fun.
We both sat there, transfixed on the screen as the picture continued to zoom in.
Little by little I could see more detail in the image, the items in the room, the logos on our clothes, the features on my face… But not Max’s.
His face was kind of grey and blurry, so I stared harder, moving forward a little more to focus as the image zoomed closer.
Still blurry, no… smoky. His face was moving and waving like it was smouldering and his body seemed to have smoke rising up from it.
“Hey, Max, what’s wrong with your”… I started as I turned to him only to see him levitating upside down, covered in a cloud of thick black smoke.
His head was looking straight at me but with no facial features at all. Only thick black smoke where his face should have been!
“Ahhhhhh, what the hell!” I screamed and scrambled off the sofa into the corner of the room.
Max began spinning around and moving closer like some kind of faceless, smoking whirlwind coming to suck me in.
“Get the hell away from me, stay back, Max, what the hell man!?”
“Don’t worry Danny, you won’t burn, trust me, don’t you wanna live forever?”
Max’s voice sounded all warped and wavy like a chewed-up tape.
“What’s happening Max, stop it please!”
“There’s no going back Danny, this is real life, you can’t rewind it now!”
“No, no!” I shouted and held my hands up in front of my face to protect myself from whatever Max was about to do.
Suddenly, I heard the sound of the VCR chewing up the cassette.
“No, not the cassette, this is the master copy, no, noooooo!” Max screamed.
His voice sounded exactly the same as the tape being chewed, all warped and reversed.
Then, he was gone and I was standing in the basement alone, the TV showing nothing but static.
I rushed up the stairs and out of the basement to find the whole house empty. Literally nothing, no carpet, no furniture, no paint on the walls nothing. Just an empty, run-down and decaying old house.
I opened the basement door and looked down the stairs… Nothing!
No sofa, no TV and no VCR, nothing!
I ran for the front door, grabbed the handle and flung it open so hard it hit the wall and a glass panel cracked and fell to the floor.
I ran all the way home without stopping or looking back once.
When I got in, I was out of breath and my throat was dry so I went straight into the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water.
My mum was still in the kitchen talking with my aunt at the table.
“Where the heck are you coming from and why are you breathing so heavily”?
“Mum, I was over at Max’s and we found this weird VCR that showed him upside down and then Max turned into a whirlwind creature thing and was about to kill me when the tape got chewed up and he disappeared!”
My mum looked at my aunt and burst out laughing.
“Kids and their imaginations ay Gilly!” My aunt chuckled.
“Tell me about it, this one never stops” my mum sighed rolling her eyes
“I swear to you, go over there right now and you’ll see the house is empty and Max has completely disappeared!” I demanded.
“Firstly, you need to calm down and remember who you’re talking to Danny! Secondly, who is this Max kid you’re on about”?
I could tell my mum was losing her patience.
“Max is the red-headed kid that lives over on Walter close. You know, his family has the house with the green roof”. I tried to explain.
“Wait, green roof?” My mum asked puzzled.
“Yes!”
“Danny, you know I encourage you to be yourself, watch your little programs and be free with your creativity, but you’re taking it too far now. It’s disrespectful to speak I’ll of the dead!”
I could tell she was annoyed now by her tone.
“The dead!? What?” I was confused.
Was my mum losing the plot too?
“Yes, the dead! Mr & Mrs Coalburne moved away about 3 years ago after their son… Max got trapped in the basement during a fire. They managed to put the fire out before he was burned but the roof collapsed trapping him in the basement. By the time they got to him, he had died from smoke inhalation. I remember thinking how tragic it was”.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing!
“No, no way! You’re wrong! I’ve been riding around and playing in the basement with Max for at least the last 4 hours. You don’t know what you’re talking about!” I shouted back.
My aunt looked at my mum with her jaw wide open. She’d never seen me speak to my mother like that before. In fact, I’d never spoken to either of my parents like that before.
“Daniella Amanda Mason that’s enough! Go to your room and think about the way you’re behaving young lady!”
My eyes were welling up with frustration because I know what I saw.
It was no use trying to argue with my mum though, so I stormed up to my room and threw myself on the bed and began to cry.
I lay on my front sobbing into my pillow for a few minutes before I had to shift my weight. Something in my pocket was digging into my hip.
I rolled onto my side and put my hand into my right jeans pocket.
There was something small, solid and oddly roundish but rectangular at the same time.
I pulled it out.
“Ugh, what the hell!?” I screamed as I threw the thing across the room.
No way! I thought to myself as I got up and stood over it.
A tooth! Someone’s front tooth!